Monster, She Wrote

by Lisa Kröger

  Jill Bauman created covers that often featured thin—even skeletal—portraits and dark, gloomy atmospheres. Our favorite is her cover for Elizabeth Engstrom’s When Darkness Loves Us (Tor, 1985), featuring a broken baby doll that’s missing a nose. As if dolls aren’t creepy enough, Bauman’s looks as if it is reaching out, almost grasping for the reader. Bauman has worked with some of the biggest names in the genre, including Peter Straub and Stephen King, and her work has earned her several World Fantasy Award nominations.

  Another horror cover artist, Rowena Morrill, achieved close to rock-star fandom. And like Cher or Madonna, her fans sometimes referred to her by just her first name. Her artwork for the original printing of Jane Parkhurst’s Isobel (Fantasy Fiction, 1977) launched her career. The book’s premise is simple: in the year 1630, Isobel Gowdie is accused of witchcraft, but unlike her contemporaries, who professed their innocence as they met a fiery death (or a watery one, or a hanging-by-the-neck one, depending on the executioner), Isobel proudly admitted she was a witch, confessing in great detail. There’s lurid sex and the devil and everything else you might imagine. Morrill’s cover is everything a ’70s horror novel deserves: a naked woman reaches up to her lover, who is a horned blue-skinned goat-man.

  Morrill created covers for horror and science-fiction books, wild scenes filled with monsters and epic battles not unlike the work of Frank Frazetta. Her art visualized the stories of authors like Philip K. Dick and Anne McCaffrey and earned numerous awards, including a Hugo for best professional artist. Her work graced other mediums, including album covers, and was even plagiarized for the evangelical literature of a cult. An original piece was found in one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces.

  Horror in the latter half of the twentieth century underwent a major identity shift. In previous decades, horror belonged to the monster roster of Universal Studios and, later, to British monster makers Hammer Film Productions. But the ’70s and ’80s paperback boom pushed the genre away from the Dracula-meets-Frankenstein-meets-Wolfman plot generator and into new territory. Authors of this era redefined the horror novel, exploring increasingly gory and, well, sometimes trashy material. The audience was relatively small at first. But as more horror paperbacks found their way onto more shelves and into more hands, the readership grew. And women authors were part of that trend.

  Lois Duncan wrote about teens in peril in books like I Know What You Did Last Summer (Little, Brown, 1973). Betty Ren Wright scared the youth of America with titles like The Dollhouse Murders (Holiday House, 1983). Patricia Wallace penned books whose covers featured every possible combination of creepy child and skeleton. Clare McNally wrote Ghost House (Bantam House, 1979), Hear the Children Calling (Penguin, 1990), and Cries of the Children (Penguin, 1992), among others. Apparently, readers—and authors—in the 1980s were afraid for, and more often afraid of, the tiny humans in their lives.

  Like the women horror writers of the pulp-magazine era (see Part Four), the contributions of women authors to this horror paperback boom tend to be overlooked. Yes, readers flocked to every new release from Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Peter Straub (and still do). But women writers were also making names for themselves, among them Suzy McKee Charnas, Sharon Ahern, Kit Reed (aka Shelley Hyde), Florence Stevenson, and Melanie Tem. If you haven’t read The Man on the Ceiling (Wizards of the Coast Discoveries, 2008), which Tem cowrote with her husband, Steve Rasnic Tem, you need to. There’s a good reason it won a Bram Stoker Award, a World Fantasy Award, and an International Horror Guild Award.

  Another woman writing during this boom was Tabitha King (yes, that King—she is the wife of Stephen). Her talent was put to good use when her agent brought her an exciting opportunity: the completion of an unfinished manuscript by the late Michael McDowell, a great and underappreciated horror writer of the late twentieth century. Her completion of his novel Candles Burning (Berkley Books, 2006) proved she could match him word for word. We also recommend Small World (Macmillan, 1981), which involves a lusty woman and adult daughter of a former U.S. president. Oh, and there’s a shrinking machine. It’s schlocky at times but a fun read.

  Every boom has its bust, and by the end of the ’80s, paperback horror no longer dominated store shelves. Small publishers like Zebra closed up shop. As with the pulps, once these paperbacks ceased to be printed, we lost access to much of the work of women authors who grew horror from a niche genre to the force that it is today.

  Fortunately, interest in these bygone books is on the rise. In 2017 the horror author Grady Hendrix offered an exhaustive look back at the gems of the era in Paperbacks from Hell, published by Quirk Books. Will Errickson’s Too Much Horror Fiction blog is an excellent source for this heyday as well. And publishers such as Valancourt are looking to republish some titles; we hope others will follow suit.

  Meanwhile, let’s explore the days when paperback horror novels were on every bookshelf, their garish covers demanding our attention. Don’t cover your eyes—you’ll want to see this.

  Recipes for Fear

  Joanne Fischmann

  1943–

  Teens of the 1980s and ’90s were well acquainted with horror. Slasher movies of the day presented all manner of terrifying, deadly scenarios to keep young people up at night. They couldn’t go to summer camp without Jason Voorhees breathing down their neck (or skewering their hearts like roasted marshmallows). They couldn’t babysit the bratty neighborhood kid on Halloween without Michael Myers stalking them. Not even sleeping was safe if you lived on Elm Street.

  Alongside all the teen slasher movies, the 1980s saw a spike in horror books written with a young adult audience in mind. Christopher Pike started the trend with such titles as Slumber Party (Scholastic, 1985) and Chain Letter (Lightning, 1989). By the end of the decade, R. L. Stine joined in with his Fear Street series.

  Another writer creating stories about blade-wielding maniacs for teens was Joanne Fischmann. As the daughter of an undertaker, perhaps Fischmann was destined to write murder mysteries. She was born in 1943, grew up in small-town Minnesota, and attended St. Cloud State University before transferring to and ultimately graduating from California State University in San Bernardino. She married and settled in Southern California with her husband, a screenwriter. Fischmann had a passion for writing and worked a variety of odd jobs to support her dream, including stints as a cook, a teacher, a florist, and a party planner.

  After publishing several mystery novels in the 1980s, many under the name Joanne Fluke, Fischmann began writing a series of “suspense thrillers” (translation: horror) for a young adult audience. The first was for Kensington Books’ Scream series. As Jo Gibson, she wrote the fourth book in the series, The Dead Girl, which was published in 1993. The cover, whose artist is unknown, is quintessential ’90s teen horror: a young girl wearing head-to-toe denim clutches her chest and steps on a grave—as a skeleton hand reaches up and grabs her ankle. The plot is simple: a teenage girl moves to a new town where everyone keeps mistaking her for her dead cousin, and she begins to fear that the same dead cousin may be trying to possess her living body.

  Fischmann continued writing YA horror with My Bloody Valentine (Zebra, 1995), which follows a group of teen girls all vying to be the belle of the Valentine’s Day dance. The competition is deadly! A year later she published The Dance of Death (Scholastic, 1996), a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale about cursed dancing shoes. Fischmann also penned three Christmas-themed horror novels: Slay Bells (Z-Fave/Kensington 1994) and The Crush and The Crush II (Z-Fave/Kensington, both 1994). In 2014 Kensington rereleased Obsessed, which collected The Crush and its sequel; Twisted, which contains My Bloody Valentine, The Séance (originally published by Zebra in 1996), and Slay Bells; and Afraid, which includes The Dance of Death and The Dead Girl. Unfortunately, the covers—close-up photographs of half-obscured faces—are less intriguing than what appeared on the originals.

  Jo Gibson’s career ended in 2014 with those three books, bu
t Fischmann’s did not. She returned to writing as Joanne Fluke and cooked up an entirely new career, this time penning a series of cozy (meaning no blood or gore) mysteries about a lovable baker named Hannah Swensen. Dead bodies keep interrupting her as she tries to run her bakery, the Cookie Jar. The first book, The Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder, was originally published in 2000 by Kensington. It was an immediate hit, not only due to the likeable protagonist but also thanks to recipes interspersed throughout. By 2018 Fluke had published twenty-two titles in this series, which spawned spin-off cookbooks and a made-for-TV movie series, starring Alison Sweeney as the titular baker.

  We love a good chocolate chip cookie (and so do Fluke’s fans, apparently), but we love teenage slasher horror just a little bit more.

  Reading List

  Not to be missed: Joanne Fischmann wrote horror that seems downright cheery when compared to work by Lisa Tuttle, Ruby Jean Jensen, or V. C. Andrews. She wrote for a teen audience, and her books are more light suspense than anything else. But if you suffer from ’80s nostalgia (and have a soft spot for the shopping mall setting of so many teen ’80s movies), Slay Bells is your best bet.

  Also try: Before launching the Hannah Swensen books, Fischmann wrote a few adult psychological thrillers using the Fluke surname. Winter Chill (Kensington, 1984) is about a snow-buried Minnesota town and a series of horrible “accidents” claiming its citizens. There is nothing cozy about this book—the tone is as dark as winter nights in the Upper Midwest.

  Related work: One of the biggest names on the Scholastic Books teen horror roster was Caroline B. Cooney, who has written more than seventy-five books. Though she is adept at writing mysteries—Hush Little Baby (Scholastic, 1998), Safe as the Grave (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979), and the Janie Johnson series, which started with The Face on the Milk Carton (Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1990)—she shines best in the horror genre, particularly with novels like Fog (Scholastic, 1989), about a strange mist that descends upon a small town and causes the students at the local school to behave oddly.

  Diane Hoh also has an impressive backlist and contributed numerous titles to the Point Horror series, which was published by Scholastic beginning in 1991 and included R. L. Stine and Christopher Pike. Hoh’s titles include The Accident (1991) and The Fever (1992), but her best work may be the standalone novel Funhouse, which tells the story of a horrible, and possibly intentional, accident on a carnival rollercoaster. Critics compared it to work by Stephen King as well as the Final Destination movies.

  “After all, there was no way that they could elect a dead girl as Valentine’s Day Queen.”

  —My Bloody Valentine

  Where Evil Meets Innocence

  Ruby Jean Jensen

  1927–2010

  In the 1980s, Zebra Books made sure that every bookstore had access to a flood of horror paperbacks. Readers were tempted with covers that featured skeletons screaming (or laughing—who can really tell with a skinless skull?) or baby dolls on a black background, staring blankly. These books came fast, one right after the other. Readers couldn’t get enough. Neither could writers, who produced a deep catalogue of titles for the “skeleton farm,” as Zebra was sometimes called.

  By the 1990s Zebra had largely slowed its manic production of horror titles, and many of their most inventive authors have drifted into obscurity. One such writer is Ruby Jean Jensen.

  The Missouri-born Jensen spent most of her life in Arkansas. Little is known about her, with the exception that she was a prolific writer for Zebra and Tor. She produced thirty novels, beginning with The House That Samael Built (Warner), published in 1974. We have to assume that at some point she made the acquaintance of an extremely creepy child, because her books established her as the horror author for stories about tiny demon spawn, picking up a tradition started by Mary Shelley. If an ominous phrase includes the word “child” or some variation, it’s probably been considered as a Jensen title; her books have names like Child of Satan House (Manor, 1978), Hear the Children Cry (Leisure, 1983), Such a Good Baby (Tor, 1982), and Vampire Child (Zebra, 1990).

  Jensen wrote about both evil children and innocent children in the clutches of evil. Home Sweet Home (Zebra, 1985) is about sweet little Timmy (can you imagine a more innocent name?) who finds himself on a mountain vacation with the perfectly friendly Mr. Walker. As the summer progresses, though, Mr. Walker turns menacing.

  Some critics have labeled Home Sweet Home cozy horror or even young adult horror, perhaps because of Jensen’s tendency to feature younger protagonists. We’re not sure this label is earned. Jensen might not be as explicitly violent or gory as other writers of her day. But she never keeps her young characters safe. They can—and sometimes do—meet violent ends.

  Toying with You

  When Jensen wasn’t writing about children in peril (or causing the peril), she turned her pen to more overtly supernatural fare, especially possessed children’s toys. Recognizing the plain fact that dolls, whose glass eyes refuse to blink and gaze at you while you sleep, are creepy, Jensen wrote more than one novel about them.

  Mama (Zebra, 1986) is a standout in the killer doll category because of the care Jensen takes in crafting her characters. Dorrie has lost her father to cancer, and as a grieving child will do, she forms an attachment to her dolly. Dorrie chooses a doll that is dented and dirty and has seen better days; she wants to heal it, to make it better, because she couldn’t make her dying father well. The appeal of Jensen’s story lies in her ability to use a tired trope—a child’s doll haunted by a supernatural entity—to craft a tale with empathetic characters. Her other doll novels include Baby Dolly (Zebra, 1991), Annabelle (Zebra, 1987), and The Living Evil (Zebra, 1993), whose tagline read, “She Walks…She Talks…She Kills!” (FYI, these killer dolls have nothing to do with the current Annabelle movie franchise. And it’s too bad, because in our opinion, Jensen’s dolls are superior.)

  It’s not all dolls, though. Jensen also wrote a book called Jump Rope (Zebra, 1988) about—you guessed it—a killer jump rope. Doesn’t sound like good horror material, but in her hands, the concept is downright creepy. A young girl finds her dead father, who has apparently committed suicide, with a jump rope wrapped around his hands. Then she sees her own doppelgänger take the rope and jump away, sweetly humming a nursery rhyme.

  Clearly, Jensen could use any mundane object to give readers chills that would last for days.

  Reading List

  Not to be missed: Ruby Jean Jensen was prolific and she amassed a following of loyal horror fans. Yet she never won awards (at least none that we could find) or received critical praise. Her extensive library has fallen out of print and her books are becoming increasingly difficult to find, but talent like hers deserves to be read. Used copies are available, and thanks to the internet, readers can find some of her titles at a reasonable price. Read The Haunting (Zebra, 1994) if you can snag a copy. Its plot is familiar: a family moves into a house possessed by evil, unaware of the past horror that occurred there. But this book is anything but formulaic and it will leave readers contemplating the story long after turning the final page.

  Also try: House of Illusions (Zebra, 1988) is a funhouse horror book worth reading if you can find a copy. Jensen writes just as brilliantly about the uncanny carnival as she does about creepy baby dolls.

  Related work: Patricia Wallace is another Zebra author worth searching for. Her book See No Evil (Zebra, 1988) is about a young girl who undergoes a cornea operation to correct her sight. We shouldn’t have to tell you that eye transplants are never a good thing in horror fiction. Wallace’s writing skills are not up to par with Jensen’s, but the book is a fun read, and it’s available in a Kindle edition. Wallace wrote several novels for Zebra, which sport some of our favorite covers in the publisher’s backlist. These include The Children’s Ward (1985), about a sick girl staying in an evil hospital, whose excellent cover depicts a young girl being held by a skeleton doc
tor wearing a surgical mask across its skull. Another title worth seeking out for the cover alone is Water Baby (1987), with a skeleton mermaid holding a fat cherublike infant.

  That face that looks so pure and so fine and so handsome, eyelashes as long as a girl’s. That is the face of a killer, my good people.

  —The Haunting

  Nightmares in the Attic

  V. C. Andrews

  1923–1986

  Ann Radcliffe wrote Gothic novels that caused a craze in the 1790s, and no author since then has whipped readers into such a frenzy with deliciously dramatic horror set in gloomy forests and crumbling mansions. Not until V. C. Andrews took the literary stage, that is. Andrews combined the elements of Gothic horror with soap-opera-style family drama. And she included more than enough incestuous plot lines to keep her audience mesmerized.

  Born and raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, Cleo Virginia Andrews had a difficult childhood. From a young age she suffered from crippling rheumatoid arthritis that was unresponsive to surgical treatments; at times she was wheelchair bound or dependent upon crutches. Still, she excelled at her studies and earned an art degree via a correspondence program that allowed her to work from home. She started her career as a commercial artist, but her writing became her lifeline to the outside world. Andrews never married or had children. Due to her health problems, which left her in pain and largely immobile, she lived with her mother for most of her life.